Author Digs Deep into Lives of
Archeologists
Brandon Sun, August 10, 2015
David McConkey
What do you think might be the coolest job around? Does your list
include “archeologist”? If so, you share a fascination with American
writer Marilyn Johnson. Her new book is Lives
in Ruins: Archeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble.
Johnson is a great storyteller. Through her vivid descriptions,
readers tag along as she joins archeologists in their natural
habitats. Those settings include digging in the Caribbean for
artifacts from the 1700s. Or looking on the island of Cyprus for
traces of a Greek village from thousands of years ago. Or learning
about forensics, attending a conference at the Machu Picchu site in
Peru, and taking a college class in evolutionary anthropology from a
“wild man” Neanderthal-looking professor.
“Archeologists,”
the author explains at the beginning of the book, are “people who
study people and the things that they leave behind – their bones,
their trash, and their ruins.”
The author weaves into her stories a number of larger controversies
and quandaries for consideration for all of us citizens. These
revolve around a central question: What about the past is worth
knowing about, investigating and saving?
Johnson reports that – like many others – a once male-dominated
field is now increasingly filled by women. The first of these female
archeologists really were breaking a glass ceiling. Johnson
interviewed one who went to university in the 1960s; she had to
endure lecturing from her professors that education for women was a
waste of time.
Today, female archeologists are bringing a fresh perspective to the
role of women in the societies of long ago. “What women did in the
past is recoverable and interesting,” the author quotes a female
archeologist telling her. Johnson points out that “archeologists
find what they’re looking for.” You won’t find it in the past, for
example, if “you never look for evidence of powerful women.”
Archeology, the author notes, has been popularized by two huge
cultural hits from the 1980s. The first was the book series by Jean
Auel that began with The
Clan of the Cave Bear. These extensively researched books had
a huge impact on how the public imagines early humans and our rather
close relatives, the Neanderthals.
And we now think differently about ancient men and women. “Auel’s
“biggest achievement,” Johnson writes, “was to replace the image of
a brutish cave man with a beautiful, intelligent, resourceful cave
woman.”
And then there’s Indiana Jones, the swashbuckling archeologist who
first appeared in the movie Raiders
of the Lost Ark. This fictional portrayal has greatly
influenced real-life archeology. Untold numbers of kids are inspired
by the Indiana Jones movies to make archeology their career. In
gratitude, the Archeology Institute of America presented an award to
the actor Harrison Ford and even appointed Ford to its board of
directors.
“Every archeologist I interviewed,” Johnson reports, “worked Indiana
Jones into the conversation, usually with affection, as if
mentioning a daredevil older brother.”
But the glamour of Indiana Jones is often not duplicated in the real
world. Most crucially: lack of funding. Johnson relates many stories
of archeologists struggling to make ends meet, both personally and
with the organizations they work for.
Ironically, one place has lots of funding for archeology: the
military. The U.S. military and the archeology profession were
shaken by the looting of the National Museum of Iraq, shortly after
the Americans invaded in 2003. A few years later, the U.S. military
inadvertently destroyed the ruins of a 5,000-year-old Babylonian
temple.
Johnson describes efforts to equip today’s soldiers with more
archeological training and resources. Troops now will do their
fighting with a greater understanding of – and sensitivity to –
heritage sites.
(The more recent intentional archeological destruction by the
Islamic State, of course, presents a whole new challenge.)
Among more peaceful settings as well, we are losing touch with our
patrimony. All too often our heritage is looted, neglected or swept
away by new development.
Lives
in Ruins is Johnson’s third book. Her first, The
Dead Beat, was about obituary writers. Her second was about
librarians: This
Book is Overdue!
“Archeologists, librarians, and obit writers – they all work
passionately and for little personal reward to save bits of our
cultural history,” Johnson concluded in a recent online interview.
“They all connect us to the people and objects and stories of our
past.”
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